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18 Close Up (Updated)
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General
Right now Hi-Definition seems to be the buzz term of the adult website world. It’s not really something that I have been overly concerned with to be honest as some people just apply the term without really being truthful. I do believe that 18 close up does genuinely seem to be heading in the right direction though. I can’t knock the quality of the content and it is helped by the fact it features some very attractive young women; Hi-Def is all good and well as long as you are showing something worthwhile.
When you login you are greeted by a big image of the latest update, although thankfully it’s not too graphic otherwise that would be a bit of a scary welcome. Navigation of the site is simple as it only has 5 sections: Home, Models, Updates, Bonus and FAQ/Contact (although the last of these is only listed in the footer).
There is a latest update listing on the homepage which is pretty comprehensive; it lists approximately the last 50 updates. This is mostly done just as text but there are some small thumbnails there too; at first I thought these were just random but it looks like the thumbs are reserved for content that features a new model or for the first update in a certain new series eg. "Anna Returns 1/6".
After that there are a variety of preview images of a handful of the most recent content along with links to their respective content.
I’m not too sure on the design of the site; needs a bit of sharpening around the edges because if you are trying to sell high quality content then you are going to want your site to look sharp and clean (otherwise no-one will believe). However they do use some nice, large imagery to show off their stuff.
There are 3 different levels of membership to this site, which are: STD, HDV and HD (with HD being full membership). The abbreviations refer to the different resolutions of the content that you are able to see but I will go into those more in the content section.
Support comes in the form of a small FAQ, but at least the questions that they have used are relevant. You can contact a member of staff by email if you need any further help.
Content
According to the site "The HD content is 100% exclusive" which is the way I prefer it as it tends to mean that they care more about what they are doing, in my opinion. They do however feature some content from their "partners" but I think that it is in the minority.
As I previously mentioned, there are 3 different levels of content: STD (presumably being standard) is at a resolution of 640x360, HDV is at a resolution of 1280x720 and HD is at a resolution of 1920x1080. That is quite a decent range of sizes so depending on your personal "needs", and the ability of your computer, you should be able to find the right level for you.
Currently there is no DRM or download limit, which is always the best way so let’s hope that nobody abuses this and ruins it for the rest of us.
The nature of the content is all solo girl and they are all very cute. Each of the 38 models tends to have one video which has then been split into several parts; not all of the models have photo sets though.
Video Section
The videos are in the aforementioned resolutions, with the odd video maybe only featuring two of the three options. The interesting thing is that there is no streaming option so it’s download only. To me, this is a good thing because once you’ve downloaded the videos, you will have uninterrupted viewing; there are too many people that want higher quality videos but aren’t willing to wait for them to stream properly and then complain about it, so this eliminates that confusion. Their latest HD videos are also encoded at an impressive bit rate of 8000 Kbps.
I’ve got no complaints about the girls or what they are doing but I did find watching the videos lacking in something. There is nothing wrong with the look or the quality of the imagery but I think that the audio was slightly unsettling; the fact that there was no music or banter, so all you could hear was mainly the fumbling of the camera, was weird. However, like I said, visually it all looks great! I was more than happy with the lowest quality video so found the higher two to be outstanding.
Picture Galleries
This is a video only site so no photography has actually been added as such - however there are screencaps accompanying some of the more recent videos and, because of the high resolutions used, they are pretty damn good. Just as a warning, there don’t appear to be galleries that you can browse per se but, you can download zips featuring the screencaps.
Now what I did find annoying was that a lot the videos don’t have any links for the zips, which is kind of fair enough, but some do have links without the zips actually being available; it does state that they aren’t currently available but it would make more sense to me for there to be no link and just make them appear when the sets arrive. A real problem is that there just aren’t enough images, which is a shame because the standard of the ones they do have is high.
I had a look at the 1280x720 and the 1920x1080 screencaps and must say that I found it hard to tell the difference between them. That being said, I’m sure that those of you that are really hot on this sort of thing and have top of the range equipment will appreciate the extra quality. For the rest of us, either resolution looks amazing and could easily be mistaken for bespoke photography.
Updates
There are 2 video updates a week as standard but the screencaps are much more random and so I cannot be certain about them. The 2 updates a week thing is kind of misleading though as one of those updates will only be an individual part of a larger video (i.e. the first part of 6).
| Picture Features: |
| Quantity: | Screenshots only - approx. 600 |
| Picture Size: | 1280 x 720 |
| Searchable: | No |
| Updates: | Unknown |
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| Video Features: |
| Quantity: | Approx. 150 including bonus content |
| Formats: | AVI (Standard) |
| Video Size: | 640x360, 1280x720, 1920x1080 |
| Clip Duration: | 5 mins approx. |
| Downloadable: | Yes |
| Preview Thumbs: | Yes |
| Updates: | 2 per week |
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| General Features: |
| Member Support: | Yes |
| Movie Support: | Yes |
| Join Options: | Credit Card, Online Check |
| Join Fees: | 30 day recurring HD Membership – HD+HDV+STD = $29.90 (down from $39.90), 30 day recurring HDV Membership – HDV+STD = $23.90 (down from $29.90), 30 day recurring STD Membership – STD = $17.20 (down from $19.90), 120 days non-recurring HD Membership – HD+ |
| Cancellation Links: | Via CCBill |
18 Close Up (Updated)
Featuring:
Movies, Young Ladies
Reviewed by Ryan on 03-Apr-2008
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